Reviews by Rachel Helps
Mormon IF
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You play as a cloudlike entity who gradually forms into a creature and gains powers as it shows mastery of the world it is creating. You are opposed by the world itself, because it doesn't want you to leave. "Evil" enters the world. There are some puzzles that take advantage of your ability to move up and down, but they are not the focus of the game. The mood is impressionistic. You are a god-nautilus, and you are exploring your capabilities and making sacrifices and enjoying being in the world.
I don't normally play parser-based games, but I wanted to play all the interactive fiction I could find by Mormons. Mathbrush suggested this game as one that he wrote that deals with themes of resurrection, which are related to theological themes. Despite the serious topic, the tone is silly and light-hearted.
Since I'm not familiar with parser-based puzzles, I think I had more difficulty than the average player. I used the hint command a LOT. But I could tell that mathbrush added a lot of flexibility to the parser, which I appreciated. The part where the "answer" to the puzzle is to (Spoiler - click to show)maximize the power wattage to get someone else in the spaceship to turn it off was funny and unexpected.
Most of the puzzles dealt directly with the limitations of not having a body. The POV of being limited to what a computer can "see" from cameras and "do" from speakers and other electronics was an interesting limitation/advantage. The three "ideas" for resurrection were interesting too: (Spoiler - click to show)transferring consciousness, cloning it, or making a younger copy. The ending decision doesn't make that much of a difference to your success.
Simple choices, interesting perspectives on sacred text, April 27, 2023I am LDS and I've spent a lot of time with the Book of Mormon. I'm also a writer of interactive fiction and a researcher of Mormon literature. As an LDS person, I liked being able to see Book of Mormon events from another perspective, even a simple one meant for teaching children. I liked that "The New Star" pitted honoring one's parents against following Jesus. I liked that you could complain about eating raw meat in "Nephi's Journey." And I liked that you could be a Zoramite or a Nephite in "Moroni's Warriors."
As an IF writer, I didn't find the narrative design or my choices all that interesting. I did like that the styling of the pages reminded me of church manuals. All three games are branch-and-bottleneck with slight changes to the ending text based on your previous choices. As a more experienced player, I wanted more nuance in how the choices affected the narrative. But as an introduction to interactive fiction for children, I understand how it's helpful for all choices to end up in a basically okay ending.
As a Mormon literature scholar, these are a fascinating reprise of the "home literature" era in the early 1900s, where most stories were meant to show the positive consequences of following the commandments (or the inverse).
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